Pecan tree fungus/pest?

Hi! I'm new here, so please forgive my general ignorance. Thanks in advance for your help.

We live in a pecan grove converted into a community in Queen Creek, Arizona (suburb of Phoenix). We were walking around the yard today inspecting the trees (as if I knew what I was looking for) and noticed what looks like a tree fungus to me. After looking closer, it looks like something is using the growth as a nest and burrowing into the tree. Maybe. I'm clueless.

I posted pics below. Is this something I should treat or get help with? Let me know if you need more information, and again, I really appreciate the advice. Thank you!

Haha, I sound like I'm on the HOA? That's funny. Maybe because I said we were "inspecting" the trees? The irony is that our HOA manages the water for all the pecan trees in the community, and over the summer they couldn't get their act together. There were long periods of no watering, which they blamed on a long list of excuses. I think the longest drought was about 7 weeks (which is a serious thing in the dead of summer in Phoenix). We lost one of our trees and most of the others look like they are struggling. But again, I'm a layman and don't know what I'm talking about. So anyway, that's why I said we were "inspecting" our trees. I'm not with the HOA. After losing that first tree, I'm trying to stay on top of things and highlight any concerns early so we don't lose any others.

Too bad someone hacked your tree, ie topped your tree or technically drop crotch pruned it to a node (branch or bud) that was too small. It should have been pruned to a branch that was at least 1/3 the diameter of the branch being cut.

What you have is a conk, a fruiting body of fungus growing inside the tree. Without doing some research I couldn't tell you which fungus that is or how damaging it is or how rotten the tree is. Either a small bird or rodent has decided to dig into some rotten wood around the conk and create a nest.

Your HOA needs to have an arborist knowledgable in pecan trees inspect it. Given the tree is fairly small at this point, the risk from failure will be pretty low. At some point, that codominant stem will have to be removed.

Thanks a lot for all the responses. The HOA hasn't been very responsive to homeowner's complaints about the treatment of the trees, but I think that's probably no surprise. We had an arborist to come out a couple years ago. He was pretty disgusted with how the trees in the community were pruned (it was done before most of the houses were built). We have another 20 some-odd pecan trees in our yard that look like the one pictured, and there are many hundreds in the community that all look the same. Sigh. Anyway, I'll be giving the arborist another call. Thanks again for the responses.

Too bad someone hacked your tree, ie topped your tree or technically drop crotch pruned it to a node (branch or bud) that was too small. It should have been pruned to a branch that was at least 1/3 the diameter of the branch being cut.

What you have is a conk, a fruiting body of fungus growing inside the tree. Without doing some research I couldn't tell you which fungus that is or how damaging it is or how rotten the tree is. Either a small bird or rodent has decided to dig into some rotten wood around the conk and create a nest.

Your HOA needs to have an arborist knowledgable in pecan trees inspect it. Given the tree is fairly small at this point, the risk from failure will be pretty low. At some point, that codominant stem will have to be removed.